Trojan Horse.

I would guess there has been some exaggeration in the propagation of the legend. at heart, it would be no more difficult to make a horse than a cart of another shape. and wooden vehicles were certainly built that could carry a sufficient force of men to initiate a sneak attack.

the challenge to me would be to make it such that it did not appear to be carrying men.

I question whether a boat left as a spoil of war might have been brought into the city. - though I am not emotionally attached to the idea that the "gift" was a horse.

Beware of greeks bearing gifts - and conversely, beware of gifts bearing greeks.

I thought the first thing to do was to call a pointless meeting where you deliver impossible objectives and an unreasonable timetable.

So the first question we have to answer is "how many men does it take to open a Trojan gate?". Once we know that, we know how many men need to be hidden in the horse. In fact, the first question would become "how big were the gates of Troy and how were they secured?". Since we don't actually know where Troy is/was (although there's one good candidate site) and exactly when the siege was supposed to have happened, getting a definitive answer to that could prove tricky.

In order;

They had all the time they needed/wanted. Asking the question makes the assumption that the story of the Horse was based on a real event, which in turn means that we have to assume that most or all of the other events were also real to a large extent. If so then the siege of Troy clearly went on for a couple of years.

It is also clear from the story (again, assuming that it is largely true) that there was no threat of the siege being lifted by a relief force. If that had been the case it would have already happened long before anyone started thinking of building something that *might* get men* inside the walls. So the Greeks withdrew when they were ready to do so, not because they were working to a timetable set by others.


Abilities wise, the attacking force would have included carpenters, shipwrights and smiths - the first two for maintaining the ships the latter arms and armor. As it seems that a lot of the Greek kings of the period took part, it is also likely that there were a fair number of well educated aides there who could do maths, take notes and sketch out a basic design.
So no matter how large and complex the 'real' horse was (if it existed) if it was possible to build it they would have all the skills they required to do so.

Resources were probably not a problem, we are talking about a force that was attacking and presumably supported from the sea. Resources in the local area (especially wood) might have been used up. But they could always send a ship or two further out to gather what they needed without drawing undue attention.
I seem to remember the story, or at least one version of it, mentioning something about them using some of their ships to build the horse. This would actually be a reasonable thing to do - the ships of the period were not built to last for more than a few years. So chances are fairly good that several of the ships would no longer have been seaworthy on closer inspection, and losses in battle would have reduced the number of ships needed to transport the rest of the army.
Inspecting and breaking up some of the ships would, therefore, not have automatically raised any alarms with the defenders. In fact that could have been taken as an indication that the Greeks were intending to withdraw, since one of the first things you'd expect them to do before retreating would be to make sure that their ships were seaworthy. Then break up those that were not to repair those that were marginal. Depending on how long the siege had been going on this might even have been a fairly common thing for them to do, since they must have been relying on their ships to bring in supplies and as such would have needed to know which ships could be sent on supply runs.


So the Greeks would have the skills to make such a thing. The time needed to construct it, as they were not working to a specific deadline forced on them. And last of all they would either have had the resources they needed to build the thing by breaking their older ships up, or would have had the ability to bring such materials. Best of all they could have done all of this without causing undue alarm, since much of this would have been covered by normal activities.
As to if they could have built this in one night...well yes and no. In theory they could have, manpower not being a major issue for an army - you have far more men available than could work on such a project without tripping over each other.
A more realistic scenario would be to build the horse in smaller sections, out of sight of the defenders, and assemble it once darkness had fallen.

Of course you do have to wonder what the chances are that the defenders would fail to realize that the damned thing was hollow and might be holding men inside....

(*Women were not allowed to be warriors or take part in wars. It was inappropriate for the fairer sex to be doing anything but having babies, they being weaker and more fragile than men. Well that and the uneasy suspicion that women might be a Hades of a lot nastier than men and possibly a lot better at killing than they were. This explains what happened to the Amazons....)

IIRC it was said that one of the Patron gods of Troy was Poseidon, he was God of the Sea but also another sphere of influence he had was horses, that's why he cursed Ulysses in the Odyssey for coming up with the idea of the Horse.

Perhaps the Trojans didn't inspect the Horse that closely as it was a holy offering?